


The First Philippic of Bahorel

by acaramelmacchiato



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Eclairs, Gen, M/M, bahorel has trouble emulating cicero, bahorel vs carl un chien continues, carl un chien - freeform, in fact bahorel is almost as terrible at being cicero as regular cicero, not really eclairs because they weren't invented yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 08:11:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1420996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaramelmacchiato/pseuds/acaramelmacchiato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bahorel calls out an old enemy. Joly spies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Philippic of Bahorel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nisiedraws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisiedraws/gifts).



“I’m writing,” said Bahorel, swatting at Joly’s curious embrace with his free hand. “Leave me alone.”

“Are you?” Joly, with narrowed eyes, looked down at the blank sheet. “It’s very subtle.”

Bahorel ignored him. Bahorel was arranged in a poetic attitude over a clean sheet of paper, and had held the pose for long enough that his ink was dry on the tip of his pen. He was somewhat undressed; his shirt not only open but yawning forward. There was a coat on the back of his chair, which he had no intention of putting on. His unwaxed mustache frowned, and shadowed him to the chin like a mask of tragedy.

He had, in short, all of the symptoms of writing but nothing of the primary malady. It was past three o’clock, and he had not put a word on the page.

“It’s an emotional undertaking,” said Bahorel, in a tone of voice straddling haughty and congested which he affected sometimes with his peers, to their confusion. “Like a man talking to his god.”

“I won’t distract you, then,” said Joly, but then he grabbed the pen from Bahorel’s hand, rested it on the desk, and distracted him.

It did not prove inspirational.

Seated at his desk again following Joly’s departure, Bahorel made a fist and tried with it to gather his thoughts like a bold gesture, to deliver them like a blow: He took up his pen, and lifting it felt momentarily inspired.

He put the pen down again.

In this manner hours passed. The sun set and then light drained from his windows. He closed the curtains and lit a lamp. It was too hot so close to his face and he moved it. He felt a chill then, and put on his robe de chamber in sinoper silk, a gift from a former landlady. He had a matching nightcap, but had lost it one night several years ago making a fast exit.

He put his head in his hands. “I who am so rich in experience,” he said aloud, staring at the poverty of his written work. “The times! The morals.”

I will leave nothing behind, Bahorel thought. And then his thoughts turned to his subject -- likely asleep, certainly snoring, the bourgeois sleep of the smug, the untroubled and the comfortable. An insulting sleep.

Against my malice, there is no rampart, Bahorel told himself, and looked at the meager materials of his siege.

In this contemplation he next found himself waking. His lamp had long since burned out and stopped smoking, but he still held his pen. A new day. A shaded sunrise; below all of it the gray street. He felt his purpose refreshed.

“For the living there is hope,” he said, and then recoiled at the sound of his own rough voice. He lifted a finger. “And for Bahorel there must be some water.”

 

* * *

 

 

“He plans it to be a speech, I’m sure,” said Courfeyrac. They were on their way to breakfast, a weekly enterprise Courfeyrac had presented to Joly, very candidly, as a bribe.

Toddling at Courfeyrac’s side was his pet, the pug dog Carl un Chien. Carl did not or could not walk in a straight line, and kept listing sideways to where Joly was about to step.

“At present, it is nothing at all,” said Joly. Uncomfortable with the similarity of their dress, and increasingly with the proximity of Carl, Joly was walking on the far side of Courfeyrac’s left shoulder. “I didn’t think you owned a pair of checkerboard trousers.”

“Hmm?” said Courfeyrac. “Yes, for some time I have, but I’ve lent them out. You recall Marius Pontmercy?” at Joly’s impassivity he spoke on: “Splendid fellow, the translator. We share an address?  Never mind. He’s been in and out of my trousers for some three months now.”

Joly bit down on his lip and stared ahead at the street for a minute.

“Yes,” he said. “I can imagine that he has.”

Courfeyrac gave him a quick sideways look, momentarily suspicious of the tone of Joly’s response. Several feet below them, Carl mimicked the gesture with an accusatory swing of his head. Losing his concentration on the ground, he blundered into Courfeyrac’s ankle.

“In any case,” said Courfeyrac, recovering. “I am confident what Bahorel is writing is a speech.”

Joly shrugged. “If you say so.”

“I do, unless you contradict me! Look, my dear fellow, I am not so generous as to expect nothing in return for buying your incredibly superstitious breakfast foods.”

“Oysters are not superstitious,” said Joly. “They are salutary, you would not understand. I do you a favor by not explaining, I know you are disgusted by and lack understanding of all things medical.”

Courfeyrac tossed his walking stick from his right hand to his left to make himself and Joly somewhat less identical. “Correct. Your profession is extremely repulsive. Whereas I, for my part, I resent even my own form, knowing it contains an anatomy.”

Joly rolled his eyes. “Indeed, sir, it contains nothing _but_ anatomy.” He was not sure about Carl, who seemed to contain only fur, a viscous jelly, and a constant manner of pompous froideur.

“A pity,” said Courfeyrac. “Well, there’s no such thing as a free meal, my friend. Bahorel is planning what, do you think?”

Joly sighed, and put a hand to his brow just under the brim of his hat. “He seems to think it’s his life’s work, anyhow. But in my observation he is only sitting at a desk looking at blank papers. Occasionally he falls asleep over them. So, let us say, he may also be about to light himself on fire.”

“Men should be cautioned against mustaches with just such a tirade. You’ll set yourself on fire! And off they come.”

“Give up his mustache, Bahorel?” Joly laughed. “I don’t think.”

“If it’s a speech,” said Courfeyrac, returning to his initial theme, “he’s a fool. Our friend thinks we are more given to indulge his whims than we are. Toil he may, his speech will not make the journey from his garret. An original writer, that is, one no one can imitate, for no one will see his work!” He was grinning by the time his voice rose to the final words.

“Of course,” Joly said. “And you expect me to do what?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Courfeyrac, the process of scheming too apparent in his expression. “Never mind.”

 

* * *

 

 

Bahorel completed a first draft at the expense of two days' shaving.

“Pardieu,” said Joly, looking at him on the third morning. “You really have been knee deep in it, haven’t you?”

Bahorel squinted at his document with exhaustion and pride. “ _Justitia suum cuique distribuit_ ,” he said, ominously enough that Joly crossed his arms and hung back by the door.

“Really -- honestly, you don’t think this is a bit ridiculous?”

“I have done my best work,” said Bahorel. “A speech. An excellent speech. And I have done it for a friend. Ridiculous? Never. I love my friends as I love virtue, and there is nothing I will not do for either.”

“Well,” said Joly. “A little soap on a razor can hardly stay your purpose, can it?”

“Leave me,” said Bahorel, turning darkly back to his desk.

Joly slammed the door, and when he was on the other side of it he rolled his eyes vigorously enough to hurt himself.

 

* * *

  

At Courfeyrac’s, he was shouted in just as Courfeyrac was feeding Carl un Chien pain à la duchesse, and Joly felt a pain in his head.

“Good morning,” he said. Courfeyrac rested a hand on Carl’s head as the dog turned to lock his bulging eyes on Joly. Courfeyrac let his dog have the rest of the pastry, and dusted his hands together before engaging in a more serious enterprise of petting Carl. His hands kept getting caught on the folds.

Carl continued to look at Joly, and did not blink. When you had the creature’s full attention you noticed that the roundness of his eyes seemed fractionally unnatural, like he was being squeezed too tightly.

“Well, you’re right,” said Joly, trying not to give away how much the focused stare of Carl unnerved him. “It’s a speech.”

“Absurd,” said Courfeyrac, and Carl made a wheezing sound of agreement or approval.

“Not in the way you think,” Joly murmured. “Well,” he said, in his natural voice. “There you have it. The poor fellow is doing it out of friendship for you, you know.”

Carl made a low noise like a growl or a snort.

At that moment, someone entered from an adjoining room. Marius Pontmercy, the roommate, the translator. In and out of Courfeyrac’s trousers, he’d said. Presently Marius Pontmercy was out of them, seemingly wearing his own. He held a book under his arm and had a hat in his hand.

“Oh,” he said, looking at Joly. “Good morning! And good morning, Courfeyrac. Well. I’m heading out for a baguette,” he nodded at his hat, and had to set the book down on an extra chair to put it on. After a moment of concentration he picked the book up again and left with it.

“Odd fellow,” said Joly. Carl had fallen asleep.

 

* * *

 

When next the Friends of the ABC convened, Bahorel for all his work appeared cleanly shaven, with his mustache waxed and firmly affixed above a self-contained smile of resolution and achievement.

“I must speak,” Bahorel said, when they had gathered. No one heard, and so he said louder: “I must speak!” and climbed on a chair.

He had the room’s attention, and drew out his papers.

“Contra Carlinum,” he said, and faltered after he had read the title because he was not sure if it was proper.

“Go ahead,” said Combeferre, who did not bother to disguise that he was reading something else.

Bahorel cleared his throat. “Contra Carlinum,” he said again, and straightened his back, putting out his free arm for balance as much as oratorical form. “Amicus est tamquam alter idem -- and so I speak for myself when I speak for my friend. I have had enemies in my time. It is no coincidence that those who hate me share despicable traits. They are all of them enemies of France -- enemies of the future. They do evil and despise the light. Why then, does my newly-declared enemy not share in the infamy of his fellows? Carl un Chien, you surprise me daily that none can see in you what I do: That you are an enemy of --”

“Courfeyrac hasn’t brought his dog,” said someone, in a voice loud enough to interrupt.

“I beg your pardon?” said Bahorel.

“Carl un Chien is not present,” Combeferre said. “You speak to him? Wait until he is here. Maybe next Thursday. We have other business, I take it? We do. On to that.”

“I never thought I would see a bust of Cicero wearing a mustache,” said Courfeyrac. “Let alone speaking.”

Bahorel, who had not gotten past his first page, climbed down from his chair, and set the packet of his speech down on the table beside him.

When the meeting ended, he was met at the door by Courfeyrac’s friend Marius Pontmercy, who put a hand on his shoulder in solemn silence and then embraced him.

“Do you have a copy?” said Marius.

“At home,” said Bahorel. “You may have this.”

He handed it over. Marius put it in his coat.

They embraced again. 

**Author's Note:**

> not gonna note the cicero because that's the whole joke but
> 
> 1."Contre la médisance il n'est point de rempart" is from Tartuffe idk Bahorel is into Molière
> 
> 2\. "The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate." -Chateaubriand
> 
> 3\. "I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God." - Thomas Browne
> 
> 4\. So apparently eclairs were "pain à la duchesse" and first appear in the like 1850s in ENGLAND but so obviously they were going strong for 30 previous years in france shhhh shhhh shhhhhhhhhh it's carl's favorite food i didn't know what to do.


End file.
